A must for chai latte lovers! This chai is premixed with honey, so it is a sticky lump that is preserved naturally for 1 year of shelf life.

The ratio takes some tinkering, I liked 8oz of milk with 12 grams of tea. YMMV on how many cardamon pods you get.

Prana Chai is fresh tasting, with a good amount of spice. No bitter or astringency despite me simmering it on the stove for awhile to get the taste right. I did not need to add any sweetener, but you might want a touch of honey.

This is a killer chai made with wild harvested Canadian bits. It is higher on the spice level, yet crisp and refreshing due to the lemongrass and orange. This chai also has chaga mushroom, which adds an interesting nutty depth. This chai is great without milk or sugar, and does not getting bitter even with oversteeping. Oversteeping will turn very spicy though.

Pretty Girls is a pretty solid puer that starts off with a dirty mushroom taste. With each infusion, it gets more sweet, mineral, and chocolate in flavor. I got 13 infusions, though I felt I should have leafed a bit more.

If you have a silver tea cup, Pretty Girls comes out really nice as it cuts through the early mushroom infusions.

Preparation

Natural Redhead is an interesting black steeped gongfu style. Blindfolded, I could be fooled it was a ruby black as it had strong fruity notes. Later infusions get malty, woodsy, and orangey. Gongfu steeped pushed to the limit I got awesome clean, floral, and orange aftertaste.

Preparation

This is a cute sheng with a lovely soft sweet profile and a lightly creamy body. It is floral and fruity, with always a looming astringency threatening to happen if you steep it too aggressively.

I did 200F and got 8 infusions, with the final being very astringent. This is not a tea to forget about steeping and a good test of your steeping technique if you go higher on temperature. You can play it safe on a lower temperature, but also keep in mind this tea is pressed super tight – so it’ll take awhile to open up.

Preparation

2017 Teabook raw is a tea for someone who hasn’t tried or is intimidated by puer. This tea is quite flexible to steep, I even used boiling water and stewed in a travel tumbler for an hour. The cake is pressed lightly, so you don’t even need a tool to break off pieces.

The notes are quite light, with notes of citrus pith, dew, and cotton.

Preparation

When you say dew, do you mean the flavor was weak and watery? Where I live, dew doesn’t have any flavor since it is basically very pure distilled water condensing out of the atmosphere. I suppose in cities in might taste like carbon if it picks up smog and impurities in the air.

I was actually impressed with this tea. For the price, it is quite solid aged white.

The flavor is of paperback books, honey, and woodsy. The final infusions got dark and slightly medicinal. Some more age likely will get more medicinal and date notes. I love the colour of aged whites as they steep up light gold, then finish off dark like a black tea.

I should really buy a couple cakes to stash to age, maybe at the next Teavivre sale.

Preparation

100 gram brick and 9 squares are huge portion sizes for white tea! This brick is also hard to break due to the big leaf and tight pressing. Excercise caution!

I got 13 infusions, and likely more if I stove boiled it to finish. I got notes of linen, aloe, tulips, wood, honey, and a bit medicinal in the end. It is not as sweet as other white teas. I plan to let this brick age, otherwise right now it is pretty daily drinker like.

Profile

Bio

I’m a tea blogger – The Oolong Owl www.OolongOwl.com – I do tea reviews, obsessively photograph teas with mischievous crocheted Owls and get tea drunk. I am also a crochet and knitting designer at Awkward Soul Designs.

To contact me for reviews, check out details at OolongOwl.com/about or email me at [email protected]

I was raised on floral oolongs and green teas, mostly “beauty” teas. Early on as a kid, I can guzzle an entire pot of tea (or two) at a Chinese or Japanese restaurant.
These days I like adventurous and interesting tea blends. I’m fearless in trying new teas! I’m into oolong, pu’erh, white, green, black, guayusa, mate and herbals. I’m not into red rooibos but I keep buying it anyway.

The tea brand that got me started into loose leaf teas was DAVIDsTea. I used to live in Vancouver Canada and had access to their shop, however that is now limited since I moved to southern California.

However, the perks of living in the US is ultra cheap, fast shipping! Since then, my tea stash insanely expanded.